Fire, or ice?
By William Rusher
Thursday, July 20, 2006

The New York Times’s headline read, “America in Longest Warm Spell Since 1776; Temperature Line Records a 25-Year Rise.” Well, what’s so new about that? The Times has been having an historic fit about global warming for years, hasn’t it?

Yes, but that particular headline ran in the good gray Times on March 27, 1933 — 73 years ago. What’s more, the Times changed its mind dramatically on the subject 42 years later, in 1975, when it startled its readers on May 21 with “Scientists Ponder Why World’s Climate is Changing; A Major Cooling Widely Considered to Be Inevitable.”

Nor has the Times been the only major periodical to blow hot and cold (if you will forgive me) on the subject of the global climate. On Jan. 2, 1939 Time magazine announced that “Gaffers who claim that winters were harder when they were boys are quite right … weather men have no doubt that the world at least for the time being is growing warmer.” Yet Time scooped The New York Times by nearly a year when, reversing itself, it warned readers on June 24, 1974 that, “Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.” Today, of course, Time has changed its mind again and joined the global-warming hysteria. On April 3 this year, it announced that “By Any Measure, Earth is At … The Tipping Point. The climate is crashing, and global warming is to blame.”

The last major attack of hysteria, in the mid-1970s, focused on the peril of global cooling, and was especially severe. Fortune magazine declared in February 1974 that “As for the present cooling trend a number of leading climatologists have concluded that it is very bad news indeed. It is the root cause of a lot of that unpleasant weather around the world and they warn that it carries the potential for human disasters of unprecedented magnitude.” Fortune’s analysis was so impressive that it actually won a “Science Writing Award” from the American Institute of Physics.

But the prize for sheer terrorizing surely belonged to Lowell Ponte, whose 1976 book “The Cooling” (a predecessor of Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth,” though from the opposite point of view) asserted that “The cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people in poor nations.” If countermeasures weren’t taken, he warned, it would lead to “world famine, world chaos, and probably world war, and this could all come by the year 2000.”

All of the above quotations, and many more, can be found in a wonderful new booklet by R. Warren Anderson and Dan Gainor of the Business & Media Institute, a division of the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Va. (Full disclosure: I am the avuncular and largely indolent board chairman of the latter.) Entitled “Fire and Ice,” it quotes alarmist predictions of both global warming and a new ice age dating back to 1895. The authors identify no less than four swings of scientific opinion, with considerable overlapping, from global cooling (1895-1932) to global warming (1929-1969) to global cooling (1954-1976) and now back to global warming (1981 to the present). The booklet can also be read for its sheer entertainment value. (I particularly liked the anecdote about the penguin found in France in 1922, which was widely viewed as an “ice-age harbinger,” though wiser heads concluded it had probably escaped from the ship of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton.)

The booklet notes sensibly that “Most scientists do agree that the earth has warmed a little more than a degree in the last 100 years. That doesn’t mean scientists concur that mankind is to blame. Even if that were the case, the impact of warming is unclear.” And in its wisest paragraph it concludes, “This isn’t a question of science. It’s a question of whether Americans can trust what the media tell them about science.”

But if you’re looking for a new career, here’s a hint: “Global warming is a good business to be in for government funding. More than 99.5 percent of American climate change funding comes from the government, which spends $4 billion per year on climate change research.”

Misled again: The Hockey Stick climate
History is flawed, and so is the process by which its author’s claims have been adjudicated

Ross McKitrick is an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph.

(CNSNews.com) – People sweltering from a heat wave in the Mid-Atlantic region of the U.S. might find cold comfort in the fact that the temperatures of the past few days are not the hottest on record. That “honor” belongs to a summer 76 years ago — decades before the controversy over “man-made global warming” began.

“From June 1 to August 31, 1930, 21 days had high temperatures that were 100 degrees or above” in the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, Patrick Michaels, senior fellow for environmental studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told Cybercast News Service. “That summer has never been approached, and it’s not going to be approached this year.”

Between July 19 and Aug. 9 of that year, heat records were set on nine days and they remain unbroken more than three-quarters of a century later. “That’s hot,” added Michaels, who also serves as professor of natural resources at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, Va.

The summer of 1930 also marked the beginning of the longest drought of the 20th century. In 1934, dry regions stretched from New York and Pennsylvania across the Great Plains to California. A “dust bowl” covered about 50 million acres in the south-central plains during the winter of 1935-1936.

However, the first six months of this year were the hottest across the nation since the federal government began keeping records in 1890, according to Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration who told NBC News that about 50 all-time high-temperature records were broken during the month of July.

But Michaels noted that high temperatures are common in the middle of the summer.

“Climatologically, the last week in July is the warmest week of the year on average, and when the atmospheric flow patterns get into anomalously warm configurations during this time of the year, temperatures will skyrocket,” he said.

Along with an unusual upper-air pattern, the Washington, D.C., area “was exceedingly dry” during the summer of 1930, Michaels stated.

“Generally speaking, when the ground is moist here, temperatures cap out in the high 90s,” he noted. “That’s because the sun’s energy is divided into evaporating water and directly heating the surface. If the surface is dry, then everything goes into heating the surface, and you get exceedingly hot temperatures like you saw in 1930.

“Big cities are getting warmer — with or without global warming — because the bricks and the buildings and the pavement retain heat,” Michaels added. For that reason, he prefers to compare temperatures in nearby rural areas. “There’s been very little change” in those areas, “so we trust the record to be a reliable indicator of base climate.”

Residents of the nation’s capital can look forward to some relief, as weather forecasts for the weekend call for a cooling trend. “If we were going to go into the 100s — the 103 and 104 degree range — we would have done it, but there’s just a little bit too much moisture in the surface to allow that to happen,” Michaels said. He noted, however, that temperatures are expected to rise again next week.

The mid-summer temperatures have provided more opportunities for environmentalists subscribing to the theory that man is responsible for the current global warming.

Jay Gulledge, senior research fellow for science and impacts at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, told NBC News on Wednesday that “this heat wave and other extreme events we’ve seen in recent years are completely consistent with what we expect to become more common as a result of global warming, even though we can’t be definitive on any single event.”

Michaels acknowledged that “global temperatures have been warming slightly for several decades” and noted that the surface of the world “is a little bit warmer than it was in the 1930s” even though “temperatures dropped between 1940 and 1975.”

“Usually, the way the jet stream breaks out is very hot in the East and relatively cool in the West or vice versa,” he said. “This time around, it looks more like the summers of the 1930s,” but he dismissed the idea that the extreme temperatures of that time were caused by man-made “global warming” since “it wasn’t around then.”

Although the recent heat wave have not convinced Michaels that “global warming” is a severe problem, it was apparently enough to make a “convert” out of conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson.

“We really need to address the burning of fossil fuels,” Robertson said during his “700 Club” broadcast on Thursday. The high temperatures in some regions of the U.S. East are “the most convincing evidence I’ve seen on global warming in a long time,” he added.

Most of the literate world today regards “global warming” as both real and dangerous. Indeed, the diplomatic activity concerning warming might lead one to believe that it is the major crisis confronting mankind. The June 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, focused on international agreements to deal with that threat, and the heads of state from dozens of countries attended. I must state at the outset, that, as a scientist, I can find no substantive basis for the warming scenarios being popularly described. Moreover, according to many studies I have read by economists, agronomists, and hydrologists, there would be little difficulty adapting to such warming if it were to occur. Such was also the conclusion of the recent National Research Council’s report on adapting to global change. Many aspects of the catastrophic scenario have already been largely discounted by the scientific community. For example, fears of massive sea-level increases accompanied many of the early discussions of global warming, but those estimates have been steadily reduced by orders of magnitude, and now it is widely agreed that even the potential contribution of warming to sea-level rise would be swamped by other more important factors.

To show why I assert that there is no substantive basis for predictions of sizeable global warming due to observed increases in minor greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons, I shall briefly review the science associated with those predictions.

Summary of Scientific Issues

Before even considering “greenhouse theory,” it may be helpful to begin with the issue that is almost always taken as a given–that carbon dioxide will inevitably increase to values double and even quadruple present values. Evidence from the analysis of ice cores and after 1958 from direct atmospheric sampling shows that the amount of carbon dioxide in the air has been increasing since 1800. Before 1800 the density was about 275 parts per million by volume. Today it is about 355 parts per million by volume. The increase is generally believed to be due to the combination of increased burning of fossil fuels and before 1905 to deforestation. The total source is estimated to have been increasing exponentially at least until 1973. From 1973 until 1990 the rate of increase has been much slower, however. About half the production of carbon dioxide has appeared in the atmosphere.

Predicting what will happen to carbon dioxide over the next century is a rather uncertain matter. By assuming a shift toward the increased use of coal, rapid advances in the third world’s standard of living, large population increases, and a reduction in nuclear and other nonfossil fuels, one can generate an emissions scenario that will lead to a doubling of carbon dioxide by 2030–if one uses a particular model for the chemical response to carbon dioxide emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group I’s model referred to that as the “business as usual” scenario. As it turns out, the chemical model used was inconsistent with the past century’s record; it would have predicted that we would already have about 400 parts per million by volume. An improved model developed at the Max Planck Institute in Hamburg shows that even the “business as usual” scenario does not double carbon dioxide by the year 2100. It seems unlikely moreover that the indefinite future of energy belongs to coal. I also find it difficult to believe that technology will not lead to improved nuclear reactors within fifty years.

Nevertheless, we have already seen a significant increase in carbon dioxide that has been accompanied by increases in other minor greenhouse gases such as methane and chlorofluorocarbons. Indeed, in terms of greenhouse potential, we have had the equivalent of a 50 percent increase in carbon dioxide over the past century. The effects of those increases are certainly worth studying–quite independent of any uncertain future scenarios.

The Greenhouse Effect.

The crude idea in the common popular presentation of the greenhouse effect is that the atmosphere is transparent to sunlight (apart from the very significant reflectivity of both clouds and the surface), which heats the Earth’s surface. The surface offsets that heating by radiating in the infrared. The infrared radiation increases with increasing surface temperature, and the temperature adjusts until balance is achieved. If the atmosphere were also transparent to infrared radiation, the infrared radiation produced by an average surface temperature of minus eighteen degrees centigrade would balance the incoming solar radiation (less that amount reflected back to space by clouds). The atmosphere is not transparent in the infrared, however. So the Earth must heat up somewhat more to deliver the same flux of infrared radiation to space. That is what is called the greenhouse effect.

The fact that the Earth’s average surface temperature is fifteen degrees centigrade rather than minus eighteen degrees centigrade is attributed to that effect. The main absorbers of infrared in the atmosphere are water vapor and clouds. Even if all other greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane) were to disappear, we would still be left with over 98 percent of the current greenhouse effect. Nevertheless, it is presumed that increases in carbon dioxide and other minor greenhouse gases will lead to significant increases in temperature. As we have seen, carbon dioxide is increasing. So are other minor greenhouse gases. A widely held but questionable contention is that those increases will continue along the path they have followed for the past century.

The simple picture of the greenhouse mechanism is seriously oversimplified. Many of us were taught in elementary school that heat is transported by radiation, convection, and conduction. The above representation only refers to radiative transfer. As it turns out, if there were only radiative heat transfer, the greenhouse effect would warm the Earth to about seventy-seven degrees centigrade rather than to fifteen degrees centigrade. In fact, the greenhouse effect is only about 25 percent of what it would be in a pure radiative situation. The reason for this is the presence of convection (heat transport by air motions), which bypasses much of the radiative absorption.

What is really going on is schematically illustrated in Figure 1. The surface of the Earth is cooled in large measure by air currents (in various forms including deep clouds) that carry heat upward and poleward. One consequence of this picture is that it is the greenhouse gases well above the Earth’s surface that are of primary importance in determining the temperature of the Earth. That is especially important for water vapor, whose density decreases by about a factor of 1,000 between the surface and ten kilometers above the surface. Another consequence is that one cannot even calculate the temperature of the Earth without models that accurately reproduce the motions of the atmosphere. Indeed, present models have large errors here–on the order of 50 percent. Not surprisingly, those models are unable to calculate correctly either the present average temperature of the Earth or the temperature ranges from the equator to the poles. Rather, the models are adjusted or “tuned” to get those quantities approximately right.

It is still of interest to ask what we would expect a doubling of carbon dioxide to do. A large number of calculations show that if this is all that happened, we might expect a warming of from .5 to 1.2 degrees centigrade. The general consensus is that such warming would present few, if any, problems. But even that prediction is subject to some uncertainty because of the complicated way the greenhouse effect operates. More important, the climate is a complex system where it is impossible for all other internal factors to remain constant. In present models those other factors amplify the effects of increasing carbon dioxide and lead to predictions of warming in the neighborhood of four to five degrees centigrade. Internal processes within the climate system that change in response to warming in such a manner as to amplify the response are known as positive feedbacks. Internal processes that diminish the response are known as negative feedbacks. The most important positive feedback in current models is due to water vapor. In all current models upper tropospheric (five to twelve kilometers) water vapor–the major greenhouse gas–increases as surface temperatures increase. Without that feedback, no current model would predict warming in excess of 1.7 degrees centigrade–regardless of any other factors. Unfortunately, the way current models handle factors such as clouds and water vapor is disturbingly arbitrary. In many instances the underlying physics is simply not known. In other instances there are identifiable errors. Even computational errors play a major role. Indeed, there is compelling evidence for all the known feedback factors to actually be negative. In that case, we would expect the warming response to carbon dioxide doubling alone to be diminished.

It is commonly suggested that society should not depend on negative feedbacks to spare us from a “greenhouse catastrophe.” What is omitted from such suggestions is that current models depend heavily on undemonstrated positive feedback factors to predict high levels of warming. The effects of clouds have been receiving the closest scrutiny. That is not unreasonable. Cloud cover in models is poorly treated and inaccurately predicted. Yet clouds reflect about seventy-five watts per square meter. Given that a doubling of carbon dioxide would change the surface heat flux by only two watts per square meter, it is evident that a small change in cloud cover can strongly affect the response to carbon dioxide. The situation is complicated by the fact that clouds at high altitudes can also supplement the greenhouse effect. Indeed, the effects of clouds in reflecting light and in enhancing the greenhouse effect are roughly in balance. Their actual effect on climate depends both on the response of clouds to warming and on the possible imbalance of their cooling and heating effects.

Similarly, factors involving the contribution of snow cover to reflectivity serve, in current models, to amplify warming due to increasing carbon dioxide. What happens seems reasonable enough; warmer climates presumably are associated with less snow cover and less reflectivity–which, in turn, amplify the warming. Snow is associated with winter when incident sunlight is minimal, however. Moreover, clouds shield the Earth’s surface from the sun and minimize the response to snow cover. Indeed, there is growing evidence that clouds accompany diminishing snow cover to such an extent as to make that feedback factor negative. If, however, one asks why current models predict that large warming will accompany increasing carbon dioxide, the answer is mostly due to the effect of the water vapor feedback. Current models all predict that warmer climates will be accompanied by increasing humidity at all levels. As already noted, such behavior is an artifact of the models since they have neither the physics nor the numerical accuracy to deal with water vapor. Recent studies of the physics of how deep clouds moisturize the atmosphere strongly suggest that this largest of the positive feedbacks is not only negative, but very large.

Not only are there major reasons to believe that models are exaggerating the response to increasing carbon dioxide, but, perhaps even more significantly, the models’ predictions for the past century incorrectly describe the pattern of warming and greatly overestimate its magnitude. The global average temperature record for the past century or so is irregular and not without problems. It does, however, show an average increase in temperature of about .45 degree centigrade plus or minus .15 degree centigrade with most of the increase occurring before 1940, followed by some cooling through the early 1970s and a rapid (but modest) temperature increase in the late 1970s. As noted, we have already seen an increase in “equivalent” carbon dioxide of 50 percent. Thus, on the basis of models that predict a four degree centigrade warming for a doubling of carbon dioxide we might expect to have seen a warming of two degrees centigrade already. If, however, we include the delay imposed by the oceans’ heat capacity, we might expect a warming of about one degree centigrade–which is still twice what has been observed. Moreover, most of that warming occurred before the bulk of the minor greenhouse gases were added to the atmosphere. Figure 2 shows what might have been expected for models with differing sensitivities to a doubling of carbon dioxide. What we see is that the past record is most consistent with an equilibrium response to a doubling of about 1.3 degrees centigrade–assuming that all the observed warming was due to increasing carbon dioxide. There is nothing in the record that can be distinguished from the natural variability of the climate, however.

If one considers the tropics, that conclusion is even more disturbing. There is ample evidence that the average equatorial sea surface has remained within plus or minus one degree centigrade of its present temperature for billions of years, yet current models predict average warming of from two to four degrees centigrade even at the equator. It should be noted that for much of the Earth’s history, the atmosphere had much more carbon dioxide than is currently anticipated for centuries to come. I could, in fact, go on at great length listing the evidence for small responses to a doubling of carbon dioxide; there are space constraints, however.

Consensus and the Current “Popular Vision”

Many studies from the nineteenth century on suggested that industrial and other contributions to increasing carbon dioxide might lead to global warming. Problems with such predictions were also long noted, and the general failure of such predictions to explain the observed record caused the field of climatology as a whole to regard the suggested mechanisms as suspect. Indeed, the global cooling trend of the 1950s and 1960s led to a minor global cooling hysteria in the 1970s. All that was more or less normal scientific debate, although the cooling hysteria had certain striking analogues to the present warming hysteria including books such as The Genesis Strategy by Stephen Schneider and Climate Change and World Affairs by Crispin Tickell–both authors are prominent in support of the present concerns as well–”explaining” the problem and promoting international regulation. There was also a book by the prominent science writer Lowell Ponte (The Cooling) that derided the skeptics and noted the importance of acting in the absence of firm, scientific foundation. There was even a report by the National Research Council of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences reaching its usual ambiguous conclusions. But the scientific community never took the issue to heart, governments ignored it, and with rising global temperatures in the late 1970s the issue more or less died. In the meantime, model calculations–especially at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory at Princeton–continued to predict substantial warming due to increasing carbon dioxide. Those predictions were considered interesting, but largely academic, exercises–even by the scientists involved.

The present hysteria formally began in the summer of 1988, although preparations had been put in place at least three years earlier. That was an especially warm summer in some regions, particularly in the United States. The abrupt increase in temperature in the late 1970s was too abrupt to be associated with the smooth increase in carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, James Hansen, director of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in testimony before Sen. Al Gore’s Committee on Science, Technology and Space, said, in effect, that he was 99 percent certain that temperature had increased and that there was some greenhouse warming. He made no statement concerning the relation between the two.

Despite the fact that those remarks were virtually meaningless, they led the environmental advocacy movement to adopt the issue immediately. The growth of environmental advocacy since the 1970s has been phenomenal. In Europe the movement centered on the formation of Green parties; in the United States the movement centered on the development of large public interest advocacy groups. Those lobbying groups have budgets of several hundred million dollars and employ about 50,000 people; their support is highly valued by many political figures. As with any large groups, self-perpetuation becomes a crucial concern. “Global warming” has become one of the major battle cries in their fundraising efforts. At the same time, the media unquestioningly accept the pronouncements of those groups as objective truth.

Within the large-scale climate modelling community–a small subset of the community interested in climate–however, the immediate response was to criticize Hansen for publicly promoting highly uncertain model results as relevant to public policy. Hansen’s motivation was not totally obvious, but despite the criticism of Hansen, the modelling community quickly agreed that large warming was not impossible. That was still enough for both the politicians and advocates who have generally held that any hint of environmental danger is a sufficient basis for regulation unless the hint can be rigorously disproved. That is a particularly pernicious asymmetry, given that rigor is generally impossible in environmental sciences.

Other scientists quickly agreed that with increasing carbon dioxide some warming might be expected and that with large enough concentrations of carbon dioxide the warming might be significant. Nevertheless, there was widespread skepticism. By early 1989, however, the popular media in Europe and the United States were declaring that “all scientists” agreed that warming was real and catastrophic in its potential.

As most scientists concerned with climate, I was eager to stay out of what seemed like a public circus. But in the summer of 1988 Lester Lave, a professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote to me about being dismissed from a Senate hearing for suggesting that the issue of global warming was scientifically controversial. I assured him that the issue was not only controversial but also unlikely. In the winter of 1989 Reginald Newell, a professor of meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, lost National Science Foundation funding for data analyses that were failing to show net warming over the past century. Reviewers suggested that his results were dangerous to humanity. In the spring of 1989 I was an invited participant at a global warming symposium at Tufts University. I was the only scientist among a panel of environmentalists. There were strident calls for immediate action and ample expressions of impatience with science. Claudine Schneider, then a congressman from Rhode Island, acknowledged that “scientists may disagree, but we can hear Mother Earth, and she is crying.” It seemed clear to me that a very dangerous situation was arising, and the danger was not of “global warming” itself.

In the spring of 1989 I prepared a critique of global warming, which I submitted to Science, a magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The paper was rejected without review as being of no interest to the readership. I then submitted the paper to the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, where it was accepted after review, rereviewed, and reaccepted–an unusual procedure to say the least. In the meantime, the paper was attacked in Science before it had even been published. The paper circulated for about six months as samizdat. It was delivered at a Humboldt conference at M.I.T. and reprinted in the Frankfurter Allgemeine.

In the meantime, the global warming circus was in full swing. Meetings were going on nonstop. One of the more striking of those meetings was hosted in the summer of 1989 by Robert Redford at his ranch in Sundance, Utah. Redford proclaimed that it was time to stop research and begin acting. I suppose that that was a reasonable suggestion for an actor to make, but it is also indicative of the overall attitude toward science. Barbara Streisand personally undertook to support the research of Michael Oppenheimer at the Environmental Defense Fund, although he is primarily an advocate and not a climatologist. Meryl Streep made an appeal on public television to stop warming. A bill was even prepared to guarantee Americans a stable climate.

By the fall of 1989 some media were becoming aware that there was controversy (Forbes and Reader’s Digest were notable in that regard). Cries followed from environmentalists that skeptics were receiving excessive exposure. The publication of my paper was followed by a determined effort on the part of the editor of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, Richard Hallgren, to solicit rebuttals. Such articles were prepared by Stephen Schneider and Will Kellogg, a minor scientific administrator for the past thirty years, and those articles were followed by an active correspondence mostly supportive of the skeptical spectrum of views. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll of climate scientists in the American Meteorological Society and in the American Geophysical Union shows that a vast majority doubts that there has been any identifiable man-caused warming to date (49 percent asserted no, 33 percent did not know, 18 percent thought some has occurred; however, among those actively involved in research and publishing frequently in peer-reviewed research journals, none believes that any man-caused global warming has been identified so far). On the whole, the debate within the meteorological community has been relatively healthy and, in this regard, unusual.

Outside the world of meteorology, Greenpeace’s Jeremy Legett, a geologist by training, published a book attacking critics of warming—especially me. George Mitchell, Senate majority leader and father of a prominent environmental activist, also published a book urging acceptance of the warming problem (World on Fire: Saving an Endangered Earth). Sen. Gore recently published a book (Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit). Those are just a few examples of the rapidly growing publications on warming. Rarely has such meager science provoked such an outpouring of popularization by individuals who do not understand the subject in the first place.

The activities of the Union of Concerned Scientists deserve special mention. That widely supported organization was originally devoted to nuclear disarmament. As the cold war began to end, the group began to actively oppose nuclear power generation. Their position was unpopular with many physicists. Over the past few years, the organization has turned to the battle against global warming in a particularly hysterical manner. In 1989 the group began to circulate a petition urging recognition of global warming as potentially the great danger to mankind. Most recipients who did not sign were solicited at least twice more. The petition was eventually signed by 700 scientists including a great many members of the National Academy of Sciences and Nobel laureates. Only about three or four of the signers, however, had any involvement in climatology. Interestingly, the petition had two pages, and on the second page there was a call for renewed consideration of nuclear power. When the petition was published in the New York Times, however, the second page was omitted. In any event, that document helped solidify the public perception that “all scientists” agreed with the disaster scenario. Such a disturbing abuse of scientific authority was not unnoticed. At the 1990 annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, Frank Press, the academy’s president, warned the membership against lending their credibility to issues about which they had no special knowledge. Special reference was made to the published petition. In my opinion what the petition did show was that the need to fight “global warming” has become part of the dogma of the liberal conscience–a dogma to which scientists are not immune.

At the same time, political pressures on dissidents from the “popular vision” increased. Sen. Gore publicly admonished “skeptics” in a lengthy New York Times op-ed piece. In a perverse example of double-speak he associated the “true believers” in warming with Galileo. He also referred, in another article, to the summer of 1988 as the Kristallnacht before the warming holocaust.

The notion of “scientific unanimity” is currently intimately tied to the Working Group I report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued in September 1990. That panel consists largely of scientists posted to it by government agencies. The panel has three working groups. Working Group I nominally deals with climate science. Approximately 150 scientists contributed to the report, but university representation from the United States was relatively small and is likely to remain so, since the funds and time needed for participation are not available to most university scientists. Many governments have agreed to use that report as the authoritative basis for climate policy. The report, as such, has both positive and negative features. Methodologically, the report is deeply committed to reliance on large models, and within the report models are largely verified by comparison with other models. Given that models are known to agree more with each other than with nature (even after “tuning”), that approach does not seem promising. In addition, a number of the participants have testified to the pressures placed on them to emphasize results supportive of the current scenario and to suppress other results. That pressure has frequently been effective, and a survey of participants reveals substantial disagreement with the final report. Nonetheless, the body of the report is extremely ambiguous, and the caveats are numerous. The report is prefaced by a policymakers’ summary written by the editor, Sir John Houghton, director of the United Kingdom Meteorological Office. His summary largely ignores the uncertainty in the report and attempts to present the expectation of substantial warming as firmly based science. The summary was published as a separate document, and, it is safe to say that policymakers are unlikely to read anything further. On the basis of the summary, one frequently hears that “hundreds of the world’s greatest climate scientists from dozens of countries all agreed that.|.|.|.” It hardly matters what the agreement refers to, since whoever refers to the summary insists that it agrees with the most extreme scenarios (which, in all fairness, it does not). I should add that the climatology community, until the past few years, was quite small and heavily concentrated in the United States and Europe.

While the International Panel on Climate Change’s reports were in preparation, the National Research Council in the United States was commissioned to prepare a synthesis of the current state of the global change situation. The panel chosen was hardly promising. It had no members of the academy expert in climate. Indeed, it had only one scientist directly involved in climate, Stephen Schneider, who is an ardent environmental advocate. It also included three professional environmental advocates, and it was headed by a former senator, Dan Evans. The panel did include distinguished scientists and economists outside the area of climate, and, perhaps because of this, the report issued by the panel was by and large fair. The report concluded that the scientific basis for costly action was absent, although prudence might indicate that actions that were cheap or worth doing anyway should be considered. A subcommittee of the panel issued a report on adaptation that argued that even with the more severe warming scenarios, the United States would have little difficulty adapting. Not surprisingly, the environmentalists on the panel not only strongly influenced the reports, but failing to completely have their way, attempted to distance themselves from the reports by either resigning or by issuing minority dissents. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the New York Times typically carried reports on that panel on page 46. The findings were never subsequently discussed in the popular media–except for claims that the reports supported the catastrophic vision. Nevertheless, the reports of that panel were indicative of the growing skepticism concerning the warming issue.

Indeed, the growing skepticism is in many ways remarkable. One of the earliest protagonists of global warming, Roger Revelle, the late professor of ocean sciences at Scripps Institution of Oceanography who initiated the direct monitoring of carbon dioxide during the International Geophysical Year (1958), coauthored with S. Fred Singer and Chauncy Starr a paper recommending that action concerning global warming be delayed insofar as current knowledge was totally inadequate. Another active advocate of global warming, Michael McElroy, head of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard, has recently written a paper acknowledging that existing models cannot be used to forecast climate.

One might think that such growing skepticism would have some influence on public debate, but the insistence on “scientific unanimity” continues unabated. At times, that insistence takes some very strange forms. Over a year ago, Robert White, former head of the U.S. Weather Bureau and currently president of the National Academy of Engineering, wrote an article for Scientific American that pointed out that the questionable scientific basis for global warming predictions was totally inadequate to justify any costly actions. He did state that if one were to insist on doing something, one should only do things that one would do even if there were no warming threat. Immediately after that article appeared, Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist and a confidant of Sen. Gore, wrote a piece in which he stated that White had called for immediate action on “global warming.” My own experiences have been similar. In an article in Audubon Stephen Schneider states that I have “conceded that some warming now appears inevitable.” Differences between expectations of unmeasurable changes of a few tenths of a degree and warming of several degrees are conveniently ignored. Karen White in a lengthy and laudatory article on James Hansen that appeared in the New York Times Sunday Magazine reported that even I agreed that there would be warming, having “reluctantly offered an estimate of 1.2 degrees.” That was, of course, untrue.

Most recently, I testified at a Senate hearing conducted by Sen. Gore. There was a rather arcane discussion of the water vapor in the upper troposphere. Two years ago, I had pointed out that if the source of water vapor in that region in the tropics was from deep clouds, then surface warming would be accompanied by reduced upper level water vapor. Subsequent research has established that there must be an additional source–widely believed to be ice crystals thrown off by those deep clouds. I noted that that source too probably acts to produce less moisture in a warmer atmosphere. Both processes cause the major feedback process to become negative rather than positive. Sen. Gore asked whether I now rejected my suggestion of two years ago as a major factor. I answered that I did. Gore then called for the recording secretary to note that I had retracted my objections to “global warming.” In the ensuing argument, involving mostly other participants in the hearing, Gore was told that he was confusing matters. Shortly thereafter, however, Tom Wicker published an article in the New York Times that claimed that I had retracted my opposition to warming and that that warranted immediate action to curb the purported menace. I wrote a letter to the Times indicating that my position had been severely misrepresented, and, after a delay of over a month, my letter was published. Sen. Gore nonetheless claims in his book that I have indeed retracted my scientific objections to the catastrophic warming scenario and also warns others who doubt the scenario that they are hurting humanity.

Why, one might wonder, is there such insistence on scientific unanimity on the warming issue? After all, unanimity in science is virtually nonexistent on far less complex matters. Unanimity on an issue as uncertain as “global warming” would be surprising and suspicious. Moreover, why are the opinions of scientists sought regardless of their field of expertise? Biologists and physicians are rarely asked to endorse some theory in high energy physics. Apparently, when one comes to “global warming,” any scientist’s agreement will do.

The answer almost certainly lies in politics. For example, at the Earth Summit in Rio, attempts were made to negotiate international carbon emission agreements. The potential costs and implications of such agreements are likely to be profound for both industrial and developing countries. Under the circumstances, it would be very risky for politicians to undertake such agreements unless scientists “insisted.” Nevertheless, the situation is probably a good deal more complicated than that example suggests.

The Temptation and Problems of “Global Warming”

As Aaron Wildavsky, professor of political science at Berkeley, has quipped, “global warming” is the mother of all environmental scares. Wildavsky’s view is worth quoting. “Warming (and warming alone), through its primary antidote of withdrawing carbon from production and consumption, is capable of realizing the environmentalist’s dream of an egalitarian society based on rejection of economic growth in favor of a smaller population’s eating lower on the food chain, consuming a lot less, and sharing a much lower level of resources much more equally.” In many ways Wildavsky’s observation does not go far enough. The point is that carbon dioxide is vitally central to industry, transportation, modern life, and life in general. It has been joked that carbon dioxide controls would permit us to inhale as much as we wish; only exhaling would be controlled. The remarkable centrality of carbon dioxide means that dealing with the threat of warming fits in with a great variety of preexisting agendas–some legitimate, some less so: energy efficiency, reduced dependence on Middle Eastern oil, dissatisfaction with industrial society (neopastoralism), international competition, governmental desires for enhanced revenues (carbon taxes), and bureaucratic desires for enhanced power.

The very scale of the problem as popularly portrayed and the massive scale of the suggested responses have their own appeal. The Working Group I report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggested, for example, that a 60 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions might be needed. Such a reduction would call for measures that would be greater than those that have been devoted to war and defense. And just as defense has dealt with saving one’s nation, curbing “global warming” is identified with saving the whole planet! It may not be fortuitous that this issue is being promoted at just the moment in history when the cold war is ending.

Major agencies in the United States, hitherto closely involved with traditional approaches to national security, have appropriated the issue of climate change to support existing efforts. Notable among those agencies are NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. The cold war helped spawn a large body of policy experts and diplomats specializing in issues such as disarmament and alliance negotiations. In addition, since the Yom Kippur War, energy has become a major component of national security with the concomitant creation of a large cadre of energy experts. Many of those individuals see in the global change issue an area in which to continue applying their skills. Many scientists also feel that national security concerns formed the foundation for the U.S. government’s generous support of science. As the urgency of national security, traditionally defined, diminishes, there is a common feeling that a substitute foundation must be established. “Saving the planet” has the right sort of sound to it. Fundraising has become central to environmental advocates’ activities, and the message underlying some of their fundraising seems to be “pay us or you’ll fry.”

Clearly, “global warming” is a tempting issue for many very important groups to exploit. Equally clearly, though far less frequently discussed, are the profound dangers in exploiting that issue. As we shall also see, there are good reasons why there has been so little discussion of the downside of responding to “global warming.”

A parochial issue is the danger to the science of climatology. As far as I can tell, there has actually been reduced funding for existing climate research. That may seem paradoxical, but, at least in the United States, the vastly increased number of scientists and others involving themselves in climate as well as the gigantic programs attaching themselves to climate have substantially outstripped the increases in funding. Perhaps more important are the pressures being brought to bear on scientists to get the “right” results. Such pressures are inevitable, given how far out on a limb much of the scientific community has gone. The situation is compounded by the fact that some of the strongest proponents of “global warming” in Congress are also among the major supporters of science (Sen. Gore is notable among those). Finally, given the momentum that has been building up among so many interest groups to fight “global warming,” it becomes downright embarrassing to support basic climate research. After all, one would hate to admit that one had mobilized so many resources without the basic science’s being in place. Nevertheless, given the large increase in the number of people associating themselves with climatology and the dependence of much of that community on the perceived threat of warming, it seems unlikely that the scientific community will offer much resistance. I should add that as ever greater numbers of individuals attach themselves to the warming problem, the pressures against solving the problem grow proportionally; an inordinate number of individuals and groups depend on the problem’s remaining.

In addition to climatologists, are there other groups that are at risk? Here, one might expect that industry could be vulnerable, and, indeed, it may be. At least in the United States, however, industries seem to be primarily concerned with improving their public image, often by supporting environmental activists. Moreover, some industries have become successful at profiting from environmental regulation. The most obvious example is the waste management industry. Even electric utility companies have been able to use environmental measures to increase the base on which their regulated profits are calculated. It is worth noting that about 1.7 trillion dollars have been spent on the environment over the past decade. The environment, itself, qualifies as one of our major industries.

If Wildavsky’s scenario is correct, the major losers would be ordinary people. Wealth that could have been used to raise living standards in much of the world would be squandered. Living standards in the developed world would decrease. Regulatory apparatuses would restrict individual freedom on an unprecedented scale. Here too, however, one cannot expect much resistance to proposed actions–at least not initially. Public perceptions, under the influence of extensive, deceptive, and one-sided publicity, can become disconnected from reality. For example, Alabama has had a pronounced cooling trend since 1935. Nevertheless, a poll among professionals in Alabama found that about 95 percent of the participants believed that the climate had been warming over the past fifty years and that the warming was due to the greenhouse effect. Public misperceptions coupled with a sincere desire to “save the planet” can force political action even when politicians are aware of the reality.

What the above amounts to is a societal instability. At a particular point in history, a relatively minor suggestion or event serves to mobilize massive interests. While the proposed measures may be detrimental, resistance is largely absent or coopted. In the case of climate change, the probability that the proposed regulatory actions would for the most part have little impact on climate, regardless of the scenario chosen, appears to be of no consequence.

Modelling and Societal Instability

So far I have emphasized the political elements in the current climate hysteria. There can be no question, however, that scientists are abetting this situation. Concerns about funding have already been mentioned. There is, however, another perhaps more important element to the scientific support. The existence of modern computing power has led to innumerable modelling efforts in many fields. Supercomputers have allowed us to consider the behavior of systems seemingly too complex for other approaches. One of those systems is climate. Not surprisingly, there are many problems involved in modelling climate. For example, even supercomputers are inadequate to allow long-term integrations of the relevant equations at adequate spatial resolutions. At presently available resolutions, it is unlikely that the computer solutions are close to the solutions of the underlying equations. In addition, the physics of unresolved phenomena such as clouds and other turbulent elements is not understood to the extent needed for incorporation into models. In view of those problems, it is generally recognized that models are at present experimental tools whose relation to the real world is questionable.

While there is nothing wrong in using those models in an experimental mode, there is a real dilemma when they predict potentially dangerous situations. Should scientists publicize such predictions since the models are almost certainly wrong? Is it proper to not publicize the predictions if the predicted danger is serious? How is the public to respond to such predictions? The difficulty would be diminished if the public understood how poor the models actually are. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to hold in awe anything that emerges from a sufficiently large computer. There is also a reluctance on the part of many modellers to admit to the experimental nature of their models lest public support for their efforts diminish. Nevertheless, with poor and uncertain models in wide use, predictions of ominous situations are virtually inevitable–regardless of reality.

Such weak predictions feed and contribute to what I have already described as a societal instability that can cascade the most questionable suggestions of danger into major political responses with massive economic and social consequences. I have already discussed some of the reasons for this instability: the existence of large cadres of professional planners looking for work, the existence of advocacy groups looking for profitable causes, the existence of agendas in search of saleable rationales, and the ability of many industries to profit from regulation, coupled with an effective neutralization of opposition. It goes almost without saying that the dangers and costs of those economic and social consequences may be far greater than the original environmental danger. That becomes especially true when the benefits of additional knowledge are rejected and when it is forgotten that improved technology and increased societal wealth are what allow society to deal with environmental threats most effectively. The control of societal instability may very well be the real challenge facing us.

Correspondence on the Kyoto Protocol
Edward I. Koch
Saturday, April 24, 2004
Following is correspondence on the Kyoto Protocol that I think you will find interesting.
March 18, 2004

Professor Richard N. Gardner
Columbia Law School
435 West 116th Street
New York, New York 10027

Dear Professor Gardner:

On the Charlie Rose show recently you conveyed your support of the Kyoto Treaty and criticized President Bush’s opposition to it. I am interested in knowing why you support the treaty in view of the fact that 95 U.S. Senators, Democrats and Republicans, voted against it.

As you know, the treaty totally exempts China and India which, in the aggregate, comprise 40 percent of the world’s population, from any environmental controls. It was recently reported in the media that China has taken the place of Japan as number two, after the U.S., in the use of fossil fuels.

Under these circumstances, do you suggest that the President and 95 Senators change their position and ratify the treaty? If so, why?

All the best and many thanks.

Sincerely,

Edward I. Koch

***************************************************************************

April 5, 2004

Dear Mayor Koch:

Thank you for your letter of March 18. I certainly agree with you that the Kyoto Protocol is unacceptable in its present form. My problem with the Bush Administration is that they have given the impression that global warming is not a real problem and that the United States is unprepared to take on any international obligations to deal with it.

I was in Madrid when President Bush made his first announcement about Kyoto, and I can tell you it created a very negative reaction across the entire political spectrum, as has been true of other Bush Administration policies with respect to the Comprehensive Test Ban, the Biological Weapons Protocol, and the International Criminal Court.

One of the most damaging mistakes was the promulgation of the Bush doctrine of preventive war, which all of our allies find unacceptable, as well as totally irrelevant to the war on terrorism. The enclosed essay of mine will explain way.

With best wishes.

Richard N. Gardner

************************************************************************************

April 13, 2004

Dear Mr. Gardner:

Thanks for your April 5th response. In continuing my inquiry, it is not my intention to badger you but rather to debate the issues.

I believe the criticism of President Bush on the Kyoto Protocol by you, Senator Kennedy and others is unfair irrespective of how you otherwise feel about him. In your letter to me you agree that “the Kyoto Protocol is unacceptable in its present form.” You then defend your criticism of the Bush Administration for not supporting the protocol by stating that it has “given the impression that global warming is not a real problem. …”

If you would not accept the current Kyoto Protocol, why did other nations accept it? I agree with you that global warming and cooling are phenomena that have reoccurred through the eons. During the last Ice Age, some 10,000 years ago, the New York City area was under thousands of feet of ice. During the Medieval warm period, the world was warmer than it is today. This warm period was followed by the “little ice age,” which lasted for some 300 years and from which some scientists say we are still recovering. All this global warming and cooling occurred long before the industrial age, so obviously, it was not caused by human activity. Yet, like you, I side with those who believe remedial action is required. Nevertheless, those with a contrary opinion cannot be dismissed as dummies.

Senator Ted Kennedy, who voted with 94 other U.S. Senators to reject the Kyoto Protocol, like you, berates President Bush for rejecting the treaty. Again, I believe your and his criticism of President Bush in the media without at the same time stating your objections to the Kyoto Protocol is deceptive.

You are opposed to the Bush Administration having ended the ABM Treaty, as the treaty allowed it to do, so as to be free to deploy a missile shield. I am not. Do you rule out the possibility of a rogue nation like North Korea using the bomb or a nation like Pakistan with rogue scientists making the bomb available to terrorists? Has the feared Soviet nuclear buildup predicted by Bush’s opponents occurred as a result of terminating that treaty? No.

With respect to your support of the International Criminal Court, do you doubt that under today’s global political situation there would have been a clamor in some west European countries and surely in developing countries to indict as war criminals President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Powell, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice? I don’t believe they are war criminals. Do you? The Belgium government, not wanting to lose the U.N. facility scheduled to be paid for by the U.S., ended its own court comparable to the International Criminal Court which had indicted President Bush and Prime Minister Sharon. Did you approve of those indictments?

You refer to the Bush doctrine of preventive war as “totally irrelevant to the war on terrorism,” and you refer to your essay on the subject which, regrettably, was not enclosed with your letter. I believe one of the great doctrines today, rivaling the Monroe and Truman doctrines, is the Bush Doctrine and his statement, “[We will] make no distinction between the terrorists who committed [the September 11] acts and those who harbor them,” a concept which you undoubtedly believe is within the concept of preemptive war.

With hindsight, shouldn’t France and England have ejected Nazi German troops from the Rhineland which they had occupied in violation of the Versailles Treaty in 1936? If they had, do you think World War II might have been avoided and millions of lives saved?

I look forward to hearing from you.

All the best.

Sincerely,

Edward I. Koch

**************************************************************************************

E-Mail Received from Mr. Gardner’s Assistant:

… Amb. Gardner is travelling and will not be able to respond to Mayor Koch for several weeks. However, in the meantime, attached is the essay referred to that was not enclosed in Gardner’s letter to Koch. Thanks.

****************************************************************************************************

E-Mail From Ed Koch to Mr. Gardner’s Assistant:

I have your e-mail reporting that Ambassador Gardner is traveling. Is it not possible to refer my e-mailed letter to him by e-mail or fax? I would appreciate your doing that.

All the best.

Ed Koch

******************************************************************************************************

Response from Mr. Gardner’s Assistant:

No, I’m sorry it’s not. But I will certainly let him know of it.

*******************************************************************************************************

March 22, 2004

The Honorable Edward M. Kennedy
United States Senate
SR-315 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510-2101

Dear Senator:

I saw your interview with Tim Russert on “Meet the Press” yesterday. You were superb in stating your position on a host of issues, particularly on Iraq.

In one of your responses you stated, “Look, this nation, this president, brought us unilaterally to war. They have had a unilateral foreign policy where they rejected the Kyoto Treaty. …”

I don’t believe it was a unilateral action on the part of President Bush to reject the Kyoto Treaty in that 95 Senators voted to reject it in Senate Resolution #98. You were one of those who voted “yes” in the unanimous vote to reject it. I would ask whether in retrospect you regret not supporting the Kyoto protocol which exempted both China and India from any requirements limiting their use of fossil fuels. The Resolution resolved that “it is the sense of the Senate that the United States should not be a signatory to any protocol to, or other agreement regarding, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992, at negotiations in Kyoto in December 1997, or thereafter, which would.”

It was recently reported that China is now the second highest user of fossil fuels replacing Japan. The United States, of course, remains number one.

I would appreciate receiving your comments on this matter.

All the best.

Sincerely,

Edward I. Koch

*****************************************************************************

No Response to Date

Edward I. Koch is the former mayor of New York City. His commentary for Bloomberg radio is republished here. You can hear his weekly radio show by going to http://www.bloomberg.com/radio.

Kyoto Count Up!
February 16, 2005
Updated: August 22, 2005
Again: September 23, 2005

What a stupid game this is.

Montreal (CNSNews.com) – A founding member of Greenpeace, who left the organization because he viewed it as too radical, praised the United States for refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

“At least the [United] States is honest. [The U.S.] said, ‘No we are not going to sign that thing (Kyoto) because we can’t do that,’” said Patrick Moore, who is attending the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Montreal.

Moore noted that many of the industrialized nations that ratified the treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions are now failing to comply with those emission limits. Moore, who currently heads the Canadian-based environmental advocacy group Greenspirit Strategies helped found both Greenpeace in 1971 and Greenpeace International in 1979.

“Canada signed [Kyoto] and said, ‘Oh yeah, we can do that,’ and then it merrily goes on its way to increase CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions by even more than the U.S.,” Moore told Cybercast News Service.

Other industrialized nations — including Japan and at least 11 of the 15 European Union nations that ratified Kyoto — are struggling to meet their emission targets.

As Cybercast News Service previously reported, many organizations attending the Climate Change Conference have declared the Kyoto Protocol “dead” because of the signatories’ lack of compliance. The treaty establishes a 2012 goal of having top industrialized nations cut their industrial emissions 5.2 percent below the level that was produced in 1990.

“I think this whole Kyoto process is a colossal waste of time and money,” said Moore, who rejects alarmist predictions of human-caused ‘global warming.”

The U.N.’s 11th Annual Climate Change Conference in Montreal failed to impress Moore, who is there to promote nuclear energy.

“There is nothing concrete going on here. There is nothing good happening here as far as I can see. [The participants at the U.N. conference are] just spending a whole pile of money and auguring and talking,” he added.

Moore also slammed the movement he helped found, accusing today’s environmental groups of being co-opted by the political Left.

“The Left figures it owns the environmental movement and that has corrupted the movement greatly,” Moore said. “The [left-wing] influence has brought great dysfunction into the environmental movement. [It's turned it into] an elitist movement.”

Moore said he decided to leave Greenpeace in 1986 after the group became too radical and he could “no longer agree with the policies that were being espoused.”

The final straw, according to Moore, came when he failed to persuade Greenpeace to abandon its campaign to ban chlorine worldwide.

“I pointed out that chlorine was the main element used in our medicine and adding it to drinking water was the biggest advance in public health in human history,” Moore said. “[My argument] just fell on deaf ears. [Greenpeace] didn’t care about any of that because a global chlorine ban was a good campaign [for them].”

Even though he was a pioneer of the movement, liberal environmentalists spare no criticism of Moore, frequently referring to him as a “traitor” and an “Eco-Judas.”

Moore dismissed the criticism and asserted that the green movement has steered off course from its original mission.

“I think it’s in a dismal state — I think almost across the board, whether it’s in energy policy or agriculture policy regarding their zero tolerance on GM [genetically modified foods] or in forestry policy,” Moore said.

Bjorn Lomborg
In The Skeptical Environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg challenges widely held beliefs that … The Skeptical Environmentalist is a useful corrective to the more …

http://www.lomborg.com/books.htm

Contact: Sloane Lederer, 212-924-3900 x394, slederer@cup.org

Early Praise for

THE SKEPTICAL ENVIRONMENTALIST
Measuring the Real State of the World

Bjørn Lomborg

“This is one of the most valuable books on public policy – not merely environmental policy – to have been written for the intelligent general reader in the past ten years. . . . The Skeptical Environmentalist is a triumph.” – The Economist

“Those who abandon long-held faiths are often strident advocates of their new views. But Dr. Lomborg displays little of the convert’s zeal. His aim is not to preach free-market solutions for every problem or to deny that threats to the environment exist.” – Nicholas Wade, Science Times, New York Times

“. . . a superbly documented and readable book.” – Wall Street Journal

“The Skeptical Environmentalist marks a critical environmental moment. . . . We can forget those dreary old idols: Paul Ehrlich, Lester Brown with his Worldwatch Institute, Greenpeace and all the others. They have been exiled into the darkness. Eco-optimism can begin to rise over the Earth. After Lomborg, the environmental movement will begin to wither.” — National Post

“Bjorn Lomborg’s good news about the environment is bad news for Green ideologues. His richly informative, lucid book is now the place from which environmental policy decisions must be argued. In fact, The Skeptical Environmentalist is the most significant work on the environment since the appearance of its polar opposite, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, in 1962. It’s a magnificent achievement.” — Washington Post Book World

“. . . think of The Skeptical Environmentalist as a young geek’s answer to Al Gore’s Earth in the Balance. . . .
Lomborg pulls off the remarkable feat of welding the techno-optimism of the Internet age with a lefty’s concern for the fate of the planet.” – Rolling Stone

“The Skeptical Environmentalist should be read by every environmentalist, so that the appalling errors of fact the environmental movement has made in the past are not repeated.
A brilliant and powerful book.”
–Matt Ridley, Author of Genome

“. . . Lomborg has penned a very persuasive new book, The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World . . . . For anybody who delights in seeing smelling little orthodoxies exposed, this book will come as a special delight. . . . But facts are stubborn things. And Lomborg’s facts aren’t likely to go away.” – Detroit News

“So, do read The Skeptical Environmentalist. There will be something you agree with, and something that makes you bite the carpet. That’s money well spent these days.” – Philadelphia Inquirer

“Bjørn Lomborg is an outstanding representative of the “new breed” of political scientists–mathematically-skilled and computer-adept. In this book he shows himself also to be a hardheaded, empirically oriented analyst. Surveying a vast amount of data and taking account of a wide range of more and less informed opinion about environmental threats facing the planet, he comes to a balanced assessment of which ones are real and which are over-hyped. In vigorous and what needs not to be done about those turning out to be pseudo-problems.”
– Professor Jack Hirshleifer, Department of Economics, UCLA

“When Lomborg concludes that ‘…the loss of the world’s rainforests, of fertile agricultural land, the ozone layer and of the climate balance are terrible…’ I agree. But we also need debate, and this book provides us with that in generous amounts, including 2,428 footnotes. If you, like I do, belong to the people who dare to think the world is making some progress, but always with mistakes to be corrected, this book makes important reading.”
–Professor Lars Kristoferson, Secretary General, WWF Sweden

“Bjorn Lomborg raises the important question whether the costs of remedying the damage caused by environmental pollution are higher than the costs of the pollution itself. The answer is by no means straightforward. He has written a pioneering book.” — Richard Rosencrance, Department of Political Science, University of California, Los Angeles
“. . . a remarkable book, probably the most important book on the environment ever written.” – Daily Telegraph

“The well-publicized, but failed doomsday predictions made by some well-known environmentalist writers have inspired a number of rejoinders. This is the best one, by a wide margin. Its author teaches statistics in the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark. He has marshaled an extremely impressive array of data to buttress his optimism about long-term and current trends in environment and development. On the environmental side, the book covers traditional problems like food, energy, water, and pollution, but also future problems like biodiversity and the greenhouse effect. In each of these areas, he argues that environmental problems can be managed (and in many cases have been managed already), and that trying to turn the clock back will be costlier in economic as well as human terms. On the development side, Lomborg points to encouraging trends in life expectancy, welfare, the decline of population growth, and the reduction of hunger. While he may occasionally make things difficult for himself by insisting that the world is making progress in virtually every area, this is also what makes the book such an impressive tour de force. . . . ”
– Nils Petter Gleditsch, Editor, Journal of Peace Research, Research Professor, International Peace Research Institute, Oslo, Professor of International Relations, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim

“At last a book that gives the environment the scientific analysis it deserves, and provides understanding of the problems, the risks and the solutions. Essential reading.”
– Lewis Wolpert, Department of Anatomy and Biology, University College London

“. . . . Lomborg’s book is a warning to scientist who have abandoned statistical prudence in their work.
Anecdotal science can become biased science or lead to wrong conclusions. The magnifying glass of crisis-focused media, the scramble for competitive grants funding among scientists, and the need for pressure groups to sustain themselves, obscure less obvious and often less dramatic trends. And in particular the obscure a great deal of good news for the poor.
The concern for the environment and for the global food situation is honorable. We are all for a better environment and high biodiversity, and against food insecurity. There is a general consensus against pollution of the environment, wasteful food production methods, inequalities in access to food. There is a growing awareness of the dangers of global climate change. Lomborg does not argue against these legitimate concerns. He argues against lax and biased use of data, particularly of time series. He warns that it is degrading science by allowing bits to be picked out of context. He is afraid that pompous statements based on flimsy evidence that also attract the media and the politicians constitute a threat to the integrity of science itself. If, in the long run, opportunistic behavior of scientists leads to disregard of some of the basic tools of science – and statistical analysis is certainly one of them – then science itself will ultimately be the loser. . . .
Lomborg questions most of our common views about the environment, the global food situation, and strategies for development assistance to the poor. He may not be right on all issues, but his plea for scientific stringency in analysis, and his exposure of false environmental prophets, are all very credible.”
– Stein W. Bie, Director General, International Service for National Agriculture Research

“. . . [Lomborg’s book] presents the nature and extension of the problems we are faced with, as well as the ways along which they are being challenged and the results that are being obtained. The outcome is a hopeful view which should hearten all those who feel anxious about poverty and environment.”
– Jonas H. Haralz, Former Executive Director of the World Bank for the Nordic Countries

“Based on facts and figures that are common ground to all sides of the ecological debate, this book will change forever the way you think about the state of the world. It is a remarkable, no, an extraordinary achievement.”
– Tøger Seidenfaden, Executive Editor-in-Chief, Politiken

2006 Tropical Storm Season Now Below Normal

(21 August 2006) What a difference a year makes. After the record-breaking 2005 Atlantic hurricane season, the 2006 season is now below normal.

As of yesterday (20 August) three tropical storms will have formed in the Atlantic in an “average” year, which is the same number that have formed this year so far. Because of multi-year averaging, that means that today (August 21) slightly more than three storms would have formed, making this year (statistically speaking) just below normal.

In the hurricane category, this year is decidedly below normal, with no hurricanes so far, while by this date 1.5 hurricanes have formed in the average of years 1944 though 2005.

Reason for the Season?: Cooler Sea Surface Temperatures
Part of the reason for the slow season is that tropical western Atlantic sea surface temperatures (SSTs) are running about normal, if not slightly below normal (see graphic below, which shows SST departures from normal).

In contrast, at the same time last year SSTs in the same region were running well above normal.

The cooler SSTs in the Atlantic are not an isolated anomaly. In a research paper being published next month in Geophysical Research Letters, scientists will show that between 2003 and 2005, globally averaged temperatures in the upper ocean cooled rather dramatically, effectively erasing 20% of the warming that occurred over the previous 48 years.

Global Warming?
The slow hurricane season and the cooling sea surface temperatures might be somewhat surprising to the public. Media reports over the last year have suggested that, since global warming will only get worse, and last year’s hurricane activity was supposedly due to global warming, this season might well be as bad as last season. But it appears that Mother Nature might have other plans.

The Rest of the Hurricane Season
With only 3 named storms compared to 9 on this date last year, it is nearly impossible at this late date to have a season anywhere near as busy as last season, which totaled 27 by the end of the year. The most recent prediction from the National Weather Service (see first graphic, above) is for there to be 12 to 15 named storms by December — only half of last year’s total. It now looks like that prediction might be too generous.

While it is still possible for this hurricane season to end up above normal in activity and reach that forecast, each day that passes without so much as a tropical ‘depression’ makes that target less and less likely.

http://www.weatherstreet.com/hurricane/2006/hurricane-atlantic-2006-below-normal-season.htm

The Financial Times recently debunked the “It’s all about oil” myth

http://news.ft.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=FT.com/StoryFT/FullStory&c=StoryFT&cid=1042491848625&p=1012571727126

One of those great ideological divides that seem to withstand all reasoned argument is the view that America’s determination to oust Saddam Hussein is born of the desire to gain control of Iraqi oil. This view is prevalent in much of Europe and is shared in other parts of the world, especially in the Middle East. Even the wise Nelson Mandela believes it. The view is not, however, dominant, or even much discussed, in the US. Despite the chasm, the implausibility of this view warrants at least one more effort to dispel the myth.
And so they make the effort.

But they do not address another issue: what accounts for the tenacity with which this view is held – and will continue to be held – despite its “implausibility” and despite the efforts of the FT and all others who examine the question rationally?

Halliburton’s “Sweetheart” deals in Iraq
If you are a slave to the normal sources of news, you probably are under the belief that Halliburton, former employer of our esteemed vice president, has been awarded a myriad of “no-bid” contracts for work in Iraq. You may also be under the impression that this is why we went to war with Iraq, to line Halliburton’s, and by proxy, the Friends of Bush’, pockets.

Leading the attack is California Democrat Henry Waxman, but it was quickly picked up and amplified by all manner of traditional media.

Some facts for you:

In the early 1990s, the Army Corps of Engineers decided they needed to retain a US company under a long term contract to provide random services to the Army as needed. The Army needed a method to get things done on short notice without having to go through the exhaustive government procurement and bidding process for every project. This was dubbed “Logistics Civil Augmentation Program“, or LOGCAP.
In 1992 Halliburton won the bidding process for this contract, and lost it in 1997 to Dynacorp.
Despite having lost the contract in 1997, Halliburton was awarded a no-bid contract by the Clinton administration to conduct work needed by US Peacekeepers in the Balkans because it made little sense to change contractors in mid-stream. Halliburton already had boots on the ground, and had experience doing what the Army needed them to do. In fact, Halliburton became one of the Clinton administration’s favorite outsourcing contractors, doing work for them in Haiti and Somalia, as well as Bosnia.
In 2001, Halliburton was again awarded with the LOGCAP contract, after the requisite bidding process.
In the months leading up to the current conflict in Iraq, Halliburton was asked (under LOGCAP) to formulate a contingency plan to deal with Iraqi oil fires, should Saddam Hussein repeat his crimes of the first Gulf War by setting his oil wells on fire. Halliburton had put out 350 such fires in Kuwait, so they seemed the logical choice to turn to for such advice. “To invite other contractors to compete to perform a highly classified requirement that Kellogg Brown & Root [Halliburton] was already under a competitively awarded contract to perform would have been a wasteful duplication of effort,” said the commander of the Army Corps of Engineers, Lt. General Robert Flowers.
In February of 2003, on the eve of hostilities, Halliburton was tapped to implement the contingency plan it had created, under the LOGCAP contract. “Only [Halliburton], the contractor that developed the complex, classified contingency plans, could commence implementing them on extremely short notice“, wrote Lt. General Flowers.
Not knowing how many oil wells would be set ablaze by Saddam, the Army estimated the value of this contract at “between $0 and $7 Billion“ (the fires in Kuwait had cost $2.5B to extinguish). The actual value of the contract is now estimated to be around $600M, but the detractors still cling to the $7B number when attacking the administration about it.
So what are we to conclude by this episode? If you check the facts, it was the Clinton administration that awarded work to Halliburton outside of the standard bidding process, not Bush. Did the Clinton administration send US troops into harms way in Somalia and the Balkans just to line Halliburton’s pockets, as the Bush administration is now being charged with doing? Or are such charges reserved only for Commanders-In-Chief who don’t subscribe to your particular ideology?

Dick Cheney Donates Millions to Charity

In one of the largest sums ever donated to charity by a U.S. public official, Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife Lynne gave away nearly $7 million last year to help the poor and to medical research.

According to income tax information released by the White House on Friday, the Cheneys’ adjusted gross income in 2005 was $8,819,006.

The sum was largely the result of Mr. Cheney’s stock options from Halliburton and royalties from three books written by Mrs. Cheney.

The Cheneys gave more than three-quarters of their income – $6,869,655 – to several charities, including George Washington University’s Cardiothoracic Institute and a charity for low-income high school students in the Washington, D.C. area, Capital Partners for Education.

The Cheneys’ charitable generosity stands in marked contrast to that of their predecessors, whose sometimes stingy donations became a national embarrassment.

In 1997 for instance, Al and Tipper Gore contributed just $353 to charity, a sum that raised eyebrows even in friendly media circles.

The Los Angeles Times noted, for instance, that the Gores’ slender donation “caused some bewilderment in philanthropic circles because of the vice president’s ‘good guy’ image as an advocate for public service and social causes.”

The same year the Gores gave $353 to charity, they reported $197,729 in adjusted gross income.

A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event (usually a political, social, or historical event) as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful people or organizations rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence.

History has shown that crimes carried out by a group of people (a “conspiracy”) are not uncommon. Researchers who advocate the conspiratorial view such as G. Edward Griffin, claim that most major events in history have been dominated by conspirators who manipulate political happenings from behind the scenes. The term “conspiracy theory” is usually used by mainstream scholars and in popular culture to identify a type of folklore similar to an urban legend, especially an explanatory narrative which is constructed with methodological flaws.[1]

The term is also used pejoratively to dismiss allegedly misconceived, paranoid or outlandish rumors. Most people who have their theory or speculation labeled a “conspiracy theory” reject the term as prejudicial. Richard Hofstadter said that his use of the terminology is “pejorative”.[2]

Contents
1 Critical Overview
2 Conspiracism
3 Proposed origins of conspiracy theories
3.1 Psychological origins
3.1.1 Epistemic bias?
3.1.2 Clinical psychology
3.2 Socio-political origins
3.2.1 Disillusionment
3.2.2 Media tropes
4 Controversies
4.1 Usage
4.2 The truth of a conspiracy theory
4.2.1 Real conspiracies
4.2.2 Falsifiability
5 Conspiracy theories in fiction
6 Notes
7 References
8 Further reading
8.1 Conspiracist literature
9 See also
9.1 Concepts
9.2 Repeat sources of conspiracy allegations
9.3 Conspiracy theories by topic or main figure
10 External links
10.1 Links critical of conspiracism

Critical Overview
The term “conspiracy theory” may be a neutral descriptor for a conspiracy claim. However, conspiracy theory is also used to indicate a narrative genre that includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of grand conspiracies, any of which might have far-reaching social and political implications if true.

Critics say that most conspiracy theories are likely false, and lack enough verifiable evidence to be taken seriously. They raise the question of what mechanisms might exist in popular culture that lead to their invention and subsequent uptake. In pursuit of answers to that question, conspiracy theory has been a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore since at least the 1960s, when the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy provoked an unprecedented level of speculation.

Whether or not a particular conspiracy allegation may be impartially or neutrally labelled a conspiracy theory is subject to some controversy.

Conspiracism
When conspiracy theories combine logical fallacies with lack of evidence, the result is a world view known as conspiracism. Conspiracism is a world view that sees major historic events and trends as the result of secret conspiracies. The term was popularized by academic Frank P. Mintz in the 1980s. Academic interest in conspiracy theories and conspiracism has presented a range of hypotheses on the basis of studying the genre. Among the leading scholars of conspiracism are: Hofstadter, Popper, Barkun, Goldberg, Pipes, Fenster, Mintz, Sagan, Johnson, and Posner, from whom the following list is synthesized.

According to Mintz, conspiracism denotes: “belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history” [3]:

“Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies elites, blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology” [4].

Throughout human history, political and economic leaders genuinely have been the cause of enormous amounts of death and misery, and they sometimes have engaged in conspiracies while at the same time promoting conspiracy theories about their targets. Hitler and Stalin would be merely the most prominent examples; there have been numerous others [5]. In some cases there have been claims dismissed as conspiracy theories that later proved to have some basis in facts [6] [7]. But the idea that history is controlled by grandiose or long-standing conspiracies is dubious. As historian Bruce Cumings has put it:

“But if conspiracies exist, they rarely move history; they make a difference at the margins from time to time, but with the unforeseen consequences of a logic outside the control of their authors: and this is what is wrong with ‘conspiracy theory.’ History is moved by the broad forces and large structures of human collectivities.” [8]

The term has also been used by other authors including Michael Kelly, Chip Berlet, and Matthew N. Lyons, among others.

According to Berlet and Lyons, “Conspiracism is a particular narrative form of scapegoating that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm” [9].

“Conspiracy nut” is a pejorative term sometimes used to describe a conspiracist. It is based upon the perception that such beliefs are unfounded, outlandish, or irrational, or are otherwise unworthy of serious consideration.

Proposed origins of conspiracy theories
Humans naturally respond to events or situations which have had an emotional impact upon them by trying to make sense of those events, typically in spiritual, moral, political, or scientific terms.

Events which seem to resist such interpretation—for example, because they are, in fact, unexplainable—may provoke the inquirer to look harder for a meaning, until one is reached that is capable of offering the inquirer the required emotional satisfaction. As sociological historian Holger Herwig found in studying German explanations for the origins of World War I:

Those events that are most important are hardest to understand, because they attract the greatest attention from mythmakers and charlatans.
This normal process could be diverted by a number of influences. At the level of the individual, pressing psychological needs may influence the process, and certain of our universal mental tools may impose epistemic ‘blind spots’. At the group or sociological level, historic factors may make the process of assigning satisfactory meanings more or less problematic.

Psychological origins
According to many psychologists, a person who believes in one conspiracy theory is often a believer in other conspiracy theories and conversely for a person who does not believe in one conspiracy theory there is a lower probability that he, or she, will believe in another one. [citation needed]

Psychologists believe that the search for meaningfulness features largely in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories. That desire alone may be powerful enough to lead to the initial formulation of the idea[citation needed]. Once cognized, confirmation bias and avoidance of cognitive dissonance may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal reinforcement may equally play a part.

Evolutionary psychology may also play a significant role. Paranoid tendencies are associated with an animal’s ability to recognize danger. Higher animals attempt to construct mental models of the thought processes of both rivals and predators in order to read their hidden intentions and to predict their future behavior. Such an ability is extremely valuable in sensing and avoiding danger in an animal community. If this danger-sensing ability should begin making false predictions, or be triggered by benign evidence, or otherwise become pathological, the result is paranoid delusions.

Epistemic bias?
It is possible that certain basic human epistemic biases are projected onto the material under scrutiny. According to one study humans apply a ‘rule of thumb’ by which we expect a significant event to have a significant cause.[10] The study offered subjects four versions of events, in which a foreign president was (a) successfully assassinated, (b) wounded but survived, (c) survived with wounds but died of a heart attack at a later date, and (d) was unharmed. Subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of the ‘major events’—in which the president died—than in the other cases, despite all other evidence available to them being equal.

Another epistemic ‘rule of thumb’ that can be misapplied to a mystery involving other humans is cui bono? (who stands to gain?). This sensitivity to the hidden motives of other people might be either an evolved or an encultured feature of human consciousness, but either way it appears to be universal. If the inquirer lacks access to the relevant facts of the case, or if there are structural interests rather than personal motives involved, this method of inquiry will tend to produce a falsely conspiratorial account of an impersonal event[citation needed]. The direct corollary of this epistemic bias in pre-scientific cultures is the tendency to imagine the world in terms of animism. Inanimate objects or substances of significance to humans are fetishised and supposed to harbor benign or malignant spirits.

Clinical psychology
For relatively rare individuals, an obsessive compulsion to believe, prove or re-tell a conspiracy theory may indicate one or more of several well-understood psychological conditions, and other hypothetical ones: paranoia, denial, schizophrenia, mean world syndrome[11].

Socio-political origins
Christopher Hitchens represents conspiracy theories as the ‘exhaust fumes of democracy’, the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating among a large number of people. Other social commentators and sociologists argue that conspiracy theories are produced according to variables that may change within a democratic (or other type of) society.

Conspiratorial accounts can be emotionally satisfying when they place events in a readily-understandable, moral context. The subscriber to the theory is able to assign moral responsibility for an emotionally troubling event or situation to a clearly-conceived group of individuals. Crucially, that group does not include the believer. The believer may then feel excused of any moral or political responsibility for remedying whatever institutional or societal flaw might be the actual source of the dissonance.[12]

Where responsible behavior is prevented by social conditions, or is simply beyond the ability of an individual, the conspiracy theory facilitates the emotional discharge or closure that such emotional challenges (after Erving Goffman) require. Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities that are experiencing social isolation or political dis-empowerment.

Global warming that is caused by increased CO2 levels would show temperature changes in the atmosphere first, according to all models. Yet the atmosphere has not heated at all, only surface temperatures have increased. So that must mean the models are wrong. But if that’s the case, then who is to say that warming will continue long into the future, since those predictions are based solely on those same models which have proven to be wrong? Perhaps the warming is caused by fluctuations in the sun, which has been argued extensively (and derided by those with a financial stake in the CO2 argument), and fits the data much better than the CO2 argument. So what is our fix then, shoot ice cubes at the sun? Or wait for this particular cycle, which has happened many many times in the past, to change (as it has done many many times in the past)? Temperatures worldwide were much warmer hundreds of year ago than they are now, yet nobody burned fossil fuels then (ok, they burned wood). How is that explained? Did something drastic happen to then cause the earth to cool? Or did it cool on its own as a natural cycle, as it has many many times in the past?

Suppose you are a scientist or a professor looking for grants concerning global warming. If you ever wanted to get a 2nd grant, which way do you think your research had better lead? It is basically paying for the results you want. If you come back with a study that concludes that our warming is caused by the sun’s fluctuations, and that there is nothing we can do to change it, what do you think the odds are you will get a second grant? Zero. But these tactics have caused science by consensus, rather than science by fact. Let’s get enough people togther, and have them all say the same thing, and soon, no one will be allowed to even debate or question their theories, we must accept them, period. We are there right now with global warming. There is not a single scientist who can predict the climate accurately anywhere on the earth a week from now, yet we are supposed to blindly believe that they can predict with certainty the climate 100 years from now?

And I really don’t understand why libs are called progressives? Killing babies and euthanizing elders is progressive? The only thing progressive about liberals is their belive in taxes. Oh yes…..Libs LOVE their progressive tax system.

Because that due to humans burning fossil fuels CO2 levels increased from 280 ppm to 380 ppm in a little more than 120 years and that global temperatures have gone up during the same period of time is just a mere coincident.

Yep. According to Lindzen, Spencer, Singer and Michael Crichton — all received the Nobel Prize for being the biggest whores of science since tobacco was said to be good for your health.

Once again sexion is a retard and once again misses the point…
We are setting records and then beating those records every year for the last 10 years. the last three were quite note worthy. We are breaking records that we have just set and you dont get that, that is just retarded…

Eh, yes, recorded temperatures, as in for the last 150 years. As even the examples here demonstrate, it was still hotter back 70-150 years ago in some places, and beyond 150 years the temperatures were more than likely as hot as now at some point within the past 2000 years.

Not to mention variables such as coverage of the Earth in temperature recordings and many other factors that the “smart” people like you seemingly don’t give one damn about. Yawn.